Maitland Valley Conservation Authority Asked To Recommend Strategy For Trees Around The Maitland River

by Bob Montgomery

Maitland Valley Conservation Authority General Manager Phil Beard and Watershed Ecologist Erin Gouthro made a presentation to Goderich council at their last meeting after being asked to come up with a strategy for the trees around the mouth of the Maitland River.

Gouthro says they recommended they take a very robust ecosystem health approach, and they suggested that include the mouth of the Maitland River as well as the Bluffs and the Maitland Woods. She says they conducted a health study on trees in their forests from 2021 to 2022 and they were able to determine the health of the trees by measuring the size of the trees and how many big trees they have compared to small trees and they can determine if any trees are sick.

She says there are some concerns right now because one in five trees are dead as a result of the Emerald Ash Borer and the concern is that most of the trees that are coming back up are Ash trees and when they get to a thickness of about ten centimeters, the Ash Borers attack them again. But, Gouthro says it's not all bad news, adding, in the short term the Ash trees will continue to die, but over the long term, the system will adjust as more things eat the Ash Borer, so they expect a recovery of about thirty percent of the Ash population.

Gouthro says when they're looking at a whole forest it's very important to take an inventory of the trees you have and then the health of those trees. That should also include invasive plants and shrubs and then that gives you an idea of what strategy you should take to address the problem in your particular forest. But, she says, you have to have accurate information about what you're dealing with to come up with an effective response.

More bad news … Gouthro says as you eliminate one problem, another one appears. She says back in the mid sixties the problem was Dutch Elm Disease and when the Elm trees died, in many places the Ash tree took their place and the Emerald Ash Borer showed up. She says the next concern is the Hemlock tree and it has its own little bug. Gouthro says it's manageable, so if they do their study in the Maitland Woods and along the Bluffs and anywhere else where they conduct the study, that will tell them where the Hemlock trees are and they can start monitoring for the pest that attacks them. Wherever they find it, they can take preventative actions to limit its spread. But to do that they have to know where the Hemlock are.

The reason they're so concerned about the shoreline around Goderich is they believe one of the ways this bug is spread is on migratory birds. It hitches a ride on their body and when they come up from Niagara, they stop at the lake, along the shoreline and then they go north, and that's why they want to monitor the shoreline.

Gouthro says she's always confident that nature will rebound, but we have to be good stewards to help it along.